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It’s a heck of a way to run a pre-election campaign. On the eve of an expected election, politicians usually spend their time playing up good news, downplaying the bad, shaking hands and kissing babies.

Hollywood’s long history of misrepresentation of size, culture and more

Gwyneth Paltrow played a morbidly obese woman in the 2001 comedy Shallow Hal.

Photograph by: Jordan Strauss/AP
, Postmedia News

Leonard Nimoy can wear pointy ears, Lou Ferrigno can paint his skin green and Andy Serkis can don a green unitard to play a bug-eyed Gollum without anyone getting upset. Put Tyler Perry or Martin Lawrence in a fat outfit as Madea or Big Momma and people just laugh. But pull out a can of shoe polish to revive the spirit of Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer and you’d probably face criminal charges.

It’s a problematic reality for Hollywood — a place that thrives on self-congratulation and politically correct double-speak — because representation lies at the heart of the narrative ideal: We tell the story of the “Other” to better understand ourselves, and so we grant actors permission to don the guise of an alternate identity in order to be our guide and signpost on the journey.

Yet, as the recent buzz over Johnny Depp’s turn in The Lone Ranger proves, the rules regarding representation continue to change, and what was once considered perfectly appropriate for one generation starts to look outrageously offensive to the next.

Hollywood isn’t the speediest student, but if we look back at some of the most egregious examples of where it went wrong, the folks in La-la-land seem to be learning something – albeit very slowly:

Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer (1926) — Considered the first Hollywood talkie, The Jazz Singer features Jolson as a Jew who sings in blackface, and becomes very famous doing so. Critics at the time didn’t think there was anything offensive about the actor donning black pancake and noted the only problem was the lack of a love interest. Otherwise, Variety noted in its Dec. 31, 1926 review: “The Jazz Singer is undoubtedly the best thing Vitaphone has ever put on the screen.”

Boris Karloff in The Mask of Fu Manchu (1932) — A true matinee feature, this story of an Egyptologist desperate to stop a Chinese power monger (Boris Karloff) from reaching the tomb of Genghis Khan plays on classic lines of good and evil, with the white European Karloff embodying the dastardly villain — complete with fake hooded eyes and faux moustache. Only the Chinese government got mad at the movie, feeling Fu Manchu’s speech “kill the white man and take his women!” was inappropriate.

Charlton Heston in Touch of Evil (1958) — There’s a scene in the movie Ed Wood, starring Johnny Depp, in which Wood complains to Orson Welles about the studio forcing casting decisions down his throat. “Tell me about it!” says Welles (played by Vincent D’Onofrio). “I’m supposed to direct a thriller for Universal. They want Charlton Heston to play a Mexican!” Indeed, rumour has it that Welles would have preferred to cast Ricardo Montelban as the ace Mexican detective married to a white woman, but the studio didn’t have any faith that mainstream America would embrace the mixed marriage or a non-white actor.

Ricardo Montelban as Nakamura in Sayonara (1957) — Montelban was Mexican, but wasn’t allowed to play Mexican. However, he was allowed to play Japanese in this adaptation of James Michener’s novel about U.S. occupying forces in post-war Japan. Montelban plays Nakamura, a truly fascinating character who does not exist in Michener’s original, but tells leading man Marlon Brando that kabuki actors are adept at appropriating the identity of the other. “They are trained since childhood to have the grace of a woman yet the power of a man.” Brando’s U.S. soldier finds this deeply confusing, and responds only with “My word!”

Burt Reynolds in Navajo Joe (1966) — Joining the ranks of Victor Mature (Chief Crazy Horse), Henry Brandon (Chief Cicatriz in The Searchers) and others as a white actor in redface, this was Reynolds’ second leading role, and it featured the stud as a vengeance obsessed brave eager to kill the bandits who massacred his tribe. Directed by Sergio Corbucci, the film didn’t light a box office fire or even establish Reynolds as a leading man, but it did receive unanimously poor reviews.

Gwyneth Paltrow in Shallow Hal (2001) — Though Peter and Bobby Farrelly were no doubt weighed down by good intentions, and the idea that our culture sees only the outside package, they still ran into a lot of flack for putting super-fit Gwyneth Paltrow in a fat suit for comic reasons, and then filling the set with breakaway chairs. “The (directors) claim to be pro-fat,” said Rolling Stone’s Pete Travers. “But the film is little more than a series of fat jokes.”

Charlize Theron as Aileen Wuornos in Monster (2003) — Sure, she won an Academy Award, a Golden Globe and SAG trophy for her incredible portrayal of Aileen Wuornos in this movie from director Patty Jenkins, but Charlize Theron still found herself facing some barbs from critics who felt she still looked too pretty to play the lesbian serial killer.

Shawn and Marlon Wayans in White Chicks (2004) — Just because it turns the whole appropriation question on its keester, it’s worth noting that even white people can be the butt of Hollywood’s joke — as Marlon and Shawn Wayans proved by donning white prosthetic girl suits and playing ditzy girl cops in this Vancouver-shot dud.

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